Voc. Ed. Administrators Troubled by Lack of Certified Teachers

Facing a shortage of certified vocational education teachers,
schools are increasingly hiring people who haven't had any instruction
in how to teach.

And that has many vocational education administrators who gathered
here for a conference this month worried about the possible
consequences.

"We're having so many people come from industry without the teaching
pedagogy," said Kenneth W. Smith, the head of business and marketing
education in North Carolina's department of education.

"They don't know how to organize the material. They don't know how
to manage the classroom. They don't understand different learning
styles," he said about some of the new hires.

The conference, held Sept. 16-19, was sponsored by the
Washington-based National Association of State Directors of Vocational
Technical Education Consortium. After a daylong strategy session, the
group's teacher education committee held brainstorming sessions on how
to alleviate the problem.

Conference attendees attributed the escalating shortage to two
factors: a drop in the number of programs that prepare vocational
education teachers at universities, and a growing demand in the
marketplace for people with vocational skills. Shortages are
particularly severe in the area of technology education, they said.

"The university system has collapsed in vocational and technical
education," Richard L. Lynch, a consultant for the office of vocational
and adult education for the U.S. Department of Education, said at one
of the brainstorming sessions.

The administrators said the lack of qualified teachers has
increasingly caused them to circumvent traditional teacher preparation
programs and formal certification processes.

Schools are using provisional-certification options to hire people
right out of industry. With a provisional teaching license, a person
who has a college degree and workplace experience may start teaching
with an understanding that he or she will eventually acquire some
education credits to become fully certified.

Requirements for provisional certification vary. In Kentucky,
legislation passed in April makes it possible for schools to hire
people with 10 years of industry experience for any area of teaching,
as long as they participate in a mentoring program the first year. The
teachers may teach for three years without extra coursework but are
required eventually to complete a master's degree in education.

In Utah, on the other hand, schools may hire people with only six
years of industry experience as vocational educators; the teachers have
a grace period of four years to acquire 12 semester credit hours in
education.

States are experimenting with how to help vocational educators get
those extra education hours. Teachers in Pennsylvania can earn them by
taking courses at regional professional-development centers instead of
universities. Vermont has brought in a Waco, Texas-based firm, the
Center for Occupational Research and Development Inc., to provide
workshops for vocational educators in how to weave academics into the
teaching of vocational skills.

Alaska and North Carolina, meanwhile, are looking into how to train
vocational educators on-line.

Some administrators view provisional certifications as a positive
move for vocational education.

Robert O. Brems, an associate state superintendent and the director
of applied-technology education in Utah, said hiring people directly
from industry is working well in his state.

"The problem with trying to adapt the teacher education institutions
is that technology is changing so rapidly," he said in an interview.
The universities, he said, have "too much lag time."

Even administrators who expressed concern that vocational educators
are being hired without teaching credentials said their field is little
understood by people who set requirements for teacher
certification.

"Our field is so different," said Roy V. Peters Jr., the state
director of vocational education for Oklahoma. He said the requirements
for formal teacher certification in his state are "ridiculous" when
applied to vocational educators.

Policymakers seem more interested that a construction teacher take
language arts or foreign-language courses than that he or she take more
relevant courses on integrating academics into the classroom, Mr.
Peters added.

To get around Oklahoma's formal requirements, vocational educators
are opting instead for the state's provisional-certification process,
which doesn't place enough emphasis on teaching methods, Ann Benson,
the assistant state director of vocational education, added in an
interview. Under the provisional requirements, candidates must merely
pass a test in the content area for which they have a degree. The
teachers are then given two years to acquire six credit hours in
education.

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